Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics

Question 1

what was early work in psycholinguistics inspired by?

Answer 1

chomsky (1928) which distinguished between competence and performance

Question 2

competence

Answer 2

speaker-hearer’s knowledge of the language, inc. grammaticality judgements

Question 3

performance

Answer 3

the actual use of language in concrete situations

Question 4

grammaticality judgements…

Answer 4

are not the same as sensicality judgements

• people distinguish between those through their implicit knowledge of the syntactic rules of their language

Question 5

what did chomsky suggest about grammar?

Answer 5

it is generative- a finite number of rules can generate an infinite number of sentences, due to recursion

Question 6

what is recursion?

Answer 6

referring to itself in its definition

Question 7

what does recursion allow for?

Answer 7

rule-governed creativity, as we cannot store all possible sentences in our heads

Question 8

what is incremental parsing?

Answer 8

each sentence of a language can be described in terms of hierarchal groupings of its words, by using phrase structure trees/tree diagrams

Question 9

on-line incremental parsing

Answer 9

the parser constructs a syntactic structure on the basis of words as they arrive

Question 10

parsing models

Answer 10

1. modular accounts
2. interactive accounts

Question 11

modular accounts (serial processing)

Answer 11

1. syntactic information is processed individually
2. subsequent processing takes other information into account, e.g., semantics

Question 12

how does frazier’s (1987) garden-path model believe parsing occurs?

Answer 12

• minimal attachment (go for the simplest structure of fewest nodes)
• late closure (incorporate words in the currently open phrase)

Question 13

attach low

Answer 13

attaching to the most recent constituent

Question 14

interactive accounts

Answer 14

1. all information is processed at the same time

Question 15

constraint-based models

Answer 15

all relevant sources of information (constraints) can be used immediately to help syntactic parsing

Question 16

what happens if several levels of syntactic analysis get comparable support?

Answer 16

parsing is difficult due to competition

Question 17

how does reading evolve?

Answer 17

incrementally, as each incoming word is processed immediately

Question 18

why must semantic processors be flexible?

Answer 18

to deal with the variety of inputs quickly

Question 19

lexical ambiguity- what are homonyms?

Answer 19

words with two unrelated interpretations

Question 20

selective access

Answer 20

context restricts access to contextually appropriate meaning

Question 21

ordered access

Answer 21

activation on basis of meaning frequency, tried against context

Question 22

parallel access

Answer 22

all meanings are activated

Question 23

biased homonyms

Answer 23

when one word has a more frequent meaning

Question 24

balanced homonyms

Answer 24

both meanings are just as frequent

Question 25

what has eye-tracking research found effects of?

Answer 25

meaning frequency and context for lexical ambiguity introduces the reordered access model 1988

Question 26

reordered access model, duffy 1988

Answer 26

hybrid of access models depending on frequency and context, which can increase activation of different meanings

Question 27

lexical polysemy- when does this occur?

Answer 27

as a case of one-too-many mapping, when lexical items have more than one semantically related meaning

Question 28

metonymy

Answer 28

one salient part of an entity is used to refer to the entity as a whole

Question 29

examples of metonymy

Answer 29

part-for-whole (synecdoche) whole-for-part place-for-institution place-for-event producer-for-product

Question 30

what can metonymy lead to?

Answer 30

literal-first or figurative-first possibilities

Question 31

unranked parallel models

Answer 31

no hierarchy in activation

Question 32

ranked parallel models

Answer 32

activation levels depend on frequency, saliency, and basicness

Question 33

what happens when metonymic sense is lexicalised?

Answer 33

there is no difficulty

Question 34

what are pragmatics?

Answer 34

the distinction between what a speaker's words literally mean compared to what they might mean by their words

Question 35

what does pragmatics involve a combination of?

Answer 35

- word meaning for individual words, e.g., lexical ambiguity - syntactic structure - inferences - individual skill

Question 36

what are inferences?

Answer 36

the process of developing information beyond the literal meaning of text

Question 37

types of inferences

Answer 37

1. logical interferences 2. bridging 3. elaborative

Question 38

logical interferences

Answer 38

based on word meaning

Question 39

bridging interferences

Answer 39

relating new words to previous information to maintain coherence

Question 40

elaborative inferences

Answer 40

extending the text with your own knowledge to become indistinguishable from the original material

Question 41

"frame problem" in inferencing

Answer 41

how the current statement interacts with world knowledge, and where inferences should be stopped

Question 42

approaches to inferencing

Answer 42

1. minimalist 2. constructionist 3. hybrid

Question 43

minimalist approach

Answer 43

only two kinds of inferences are encoded during automatic reading 1. those necessary for local coherence 2. easy available information in STM

Question 44

constructionist approach

Answer 44

numerous elaborative inferences are drawn during reading

Question 45

hybrid approach

Answer 45

minimalist and constructionist reading is used depending on the goals

Question 46

what do language users tend to use instead of in-depth processing?

Answer 46

good enough heuristics

Question 47

what are the models of sentence processing?

Answer 47

garden-path model constraint-satisfaction model

Question 48

garden-path model

Answer 48

the language processor computes a single syntactic analysis without considering context or plausibility once an interpretation is made, other information evaluates its appropriateness

Question 49

constraint-satisfaction model

Answer 49

assumes all possible syntactic analyses are computed at once for all relevant information analysis with the greatest support is chosen over competitors

Question 50

less skilled comprehenders...

Answer 50

- draw fewer inferences - poorer integration of meaning across sentences

Question 51

what are individual differences in comprehension related to?

Answer 51

- differences in verbal working memory, measured by reading span - attention - suppression of irrelevant or inappropriate material

Question 52

what does suppression involve?

Answer 52

suppressing the inappropriate meaning of homonyms or rejecting the incorrect form of homophones

Question 53

what does essentialism refer to?

Answer 53

two words with the same referent or denotations; when certain categories have an unobservable underlying reality

Question 54

natural kinds

Answer 54

judgements are identified based on innate, underlying qualities

Question 55

artefacts

Answer 55

judgements based on superficial, perceptual features

Question 56

theory of mind involves...

Answer 56

the ability to understand people have different world views and mental states this is crucial for communication and language understanding

Question 57

there is evidence of _________ essentialist reasoning regardless of prompting

Answer 57

immediate

Question 58

natural kinds (TOM)

Answer 58

no evidence that inferences are based on what people know automatically

Question 59

artefacts (TOM)

Answer 59

can be explained by reader's own perspective taking